Quotes

[blueeowyn]

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
-- Robertson Davies

I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
-- Mary Chase

A coupla months in the laboratory can save a coupla hours in the library.
-- Westheimer's Discovery

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H. L. Mencken
Like [political party] is infallable?

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

The only good ideas are the ones I can take credit for.
-- R. Stevens
How very Pointy-Haired Boss

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
-- David Brin

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
-- Burt Bacharach

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
-- John A. Wheeler
Not a high risk with my friends

He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
-- E. B. White
Which is a shame, being silly is good and being unjust is Wrong

If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names.
-- Elaine Gill

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
-- Ellen Goodman
Recently 'first' has been winning

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
-- Will Rogers

When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.
-- Bob Edwards
Especially with the *stellar* parking jobs that I see frequently

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
-- Charles Wadsworth

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
I wish that thought was used more often

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
-- Jewish Proverb
Ain't that the truth. He would be 'different' and thus a target and the perps would lie about it and be protected by their 'parents' who could better be described as 'genetic donors'

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
And stopping lynchings (and showing that they are wrong) is a VERY important step, followed by getting to the point that people don't want to lynch people who have done nothing wrong

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
-- Seneca
He is more tolerant than I am, there are certain people that I don't want to honor with a quote ... though often a similar thing has been said elsewhere anyway

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
-- Pierre Gallois
QED

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
-- Edgar Allan Poe

What happens when the future has come and gone?
-- Robert Half
We've been there and back again?

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
-- Peter Drucker

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
-- W. H. Auden

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Where facts are few, experts are many.
-- Donald R. Gannon

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
-- Thomas Fuller

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
-- Kurt Vonnegut

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
-- Georges Clemenceau
or at least until someone declares a victory

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Doctor Who
I prefer child like ... or silly

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Perhaps? ... I would hope that this is a Dark Ages; I hate to think that some of what is going on is enlightened

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
Sometimes just seeing them is a victory of sorts

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
-- Ronald Reagan
Exhibit A; the current party leaders

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
-- Cyril Connolly
If it keeps people from suiciding and driving everyone else crazy...

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
-- Horace Walpole

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.
-- Rene Descartes
And you hope that the rule is correct or you have a really unstable situation ... not unlike some programs

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
Used by frauds, charlatans, and organizers for centuries

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-- Oscar Levant

Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
-- Pablo Picasso

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
-- Benjamin Franklin
With big business being a close second; both of which end up costing the regular person money

We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it.
-- Roald Dahl

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
-- John Adams
I love his lines in 1776 they rock!

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
-- Mark Twain
Though some take it as a bone and look for more

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.
-- Wilson Mizner

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell
Being eccentric should be a way of life ... some of the time

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
Or he wants attention or doesn't want you to leave or ... though I think cats can be fond of their people

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
-- A. H. Weiler

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
-- Aeschylus
Which is a shame and more than profitable; safer and more popular

I no longer prepare food or drink with more than one ingredient.
-- Cyra McFadden
Does pizza count as an ingredient?

My work is a game, a very serious game.
-- M. C. Escher
Work hard, play hard, play at your work, work at your play

Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.
-- John Russell

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.
-- Inigo DeLeon

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-- Henry Ford
I wish more people understood this

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
-- Jules Renard

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
A implies B does NOT mean that B implies A

What we call 'Progress' is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
-- Havelock Ellis

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

"If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
-- Jewish Proverb
Ain't that the truth. He would be 'different' and thus a target and the perps would lie about it and be protected by their 'parents' who could better be described as 'genetic donors'"

I suspect the real interpretation is that if people could get at God for the bad things that happen, they'd attack Him.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that interpretation ... I was more reacting to what has gone on with some of my friends who are 'different' and how the parental units deal with their children's reaction to the difference. Heck, even some of the so-called adults.